Innovation as a driver of economic growth will only thrive if researchers are able to pursue excellent blue skies research to underpin subsequent development work.

To many people innovation is seen as the key to getting the economy moving, creating jobs and solving the energy crisis. It’s harder to define exactly what innovation is, how it happens and whether it actually translates into economic growth. Last month I attended the EU’s flagshipInnovation Convention  in Brussels , a huge event formally opened by José Manuel Barroso accompanied by the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, with the Commissioner Maire Geoghegan Quinn  also in attendance.

I stayed the night before in a Brussels hotel, chosen by the Commission at whose invitation I was attending, and as I walked around my room there was plenty to make me contemplate the meaning of innovation. Modern hotel bathrooms seem designed to be an intelligence test. It is extraordinary (to my mind) quite how many different ways there are of configuring a tap in order to enable one to wash. But I was also inclined to consider whether this represented ‘innovation’ in any meaningful sense of the word, given the brief that was on my mind. (If you want to read another blogger’s frustrated view on bathrooms and taps, try this  by Dorothy Bishop.)

Designing a new tap may well mean someone creatively comes up with a novel design that sells well. Maybe it sells better than the company’s previous one and helps them make more money, but if so it will be at the expense of some other company who sell fewer, or by encouraging consumers to discard old-fashioned taps that simply worked by turning the handles at the top in favour of the latest gee-whizz version. I do not think there is a new market out there for taps that is, as it were, untapped. Possibly in developing countries, as plumbing and sanitation improve, there is a larger market share to access but not, I would imagine, by creating fancier levers, handles, sensors or other gadgetry. So, although the latest design of tap may indeed be ‘innovative’ in design terms, I am not sure it counts in a constructive way as innovation.

Innovation is important to the EU, as to many nations individually. It should serve as one of the most important drivers of economic growth, but only if appropriate investment is made. Scientists and engineers are obviously important players when it comes to innovating. My brief at the Convention was to open a debate on the large theme of ‘Shaping the 21st Century, imagining the 22nd’ from the perspective of the importance of underpinning research. I shared a platform with two captains of industry (Tony Hardy from Jaguar Landrover and Pedro Barandra CEO of Otis) and – by video link – Ellen MacArthur. Formerly an intrepid round-the-world sailor, MacArthur now runs a Foundation  concerned with the ‘circular economy’, a structure for use of resources that prevents waste via designs allowing ready recycling and using fewer biological materials. We each approached our topic from very different directions but I think our views had much in common.

When it comes to the publication of papers on science and technology, the EU is the region of the world which leads on sheer numbers, but it lags behind the US when only the most highly-cited are considered. Volume is not a particularly useful indicator and the EU is under-performing in terms of top-flight publications. Likewise, Research and Development expenditures and patent-based indicators identify a European lag both in terms of lower research investments and lower innovative output compared with other parts of the world. These various factors are interconnected.

If we want to be innovative we must succeed at doing enough of the basic underpinning science and doing it brilliantly. This is why the European Research Council  (ERC) matters so much. With excellence of the submitted proposals the only criterion for funding, there is no emphasis on identifying immediate, or even medium-term impact when the proposals are assessed. This is in clear contrast with the UK’s own Research Councils who have a strong focus on such impact. The ERC funds excellent researchers wherever in the EU and associated states they may want to work. It just so happens the UK performs exceptionally well on this front, receiving both the largest absolute number of awards – 50% more than Germany, the next most successful country – and has a success rate in winning awards second only to France of the EU countries.

Chris Patten, giving the Innovation Union Lecture  at the Convention, made his views on the importance of this very clear. Discussing the 21st century idea of the university, he stressed that they will make their most valuable contribution to European society, innovation and enhanced competitiveness by ‘resist[ing] pressures to fit them into short-term plans that … impose a central view on what sort of workforce we need and what sort of economic agents we require.’ Patten was himself centrally involved in establishing the ERC and, despite the comparative growth in its budget in this most recent funding cycle, stated he wished its share of the cake had been even bigger.

In the UK we are typically pilloried for not being good at developing our own smart ideas. This perception is not necessarily accurate, but undoubtedly we need to make sure excellent researchers continue to be funded to carry out frontier research if we are to be truly innovative.

See on www.theguardian.com

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